


By the Sweat(er) of My Brow

by elsalapizza (lamerezouille)



Series: SPN Fluff Bingo [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Everyone Thinks They're Together, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M, knitter Mary Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 10:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16993284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamerezouille/pseuds/elsalapizza
Summary: Mary's occupation of choice, after breaking her leg on a hunt, is knitting. Dean is way too invested in the process.





	By the Sweat(er) of My Brow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for #spnadventcalendar2018 on tumblr. Day 14 prompt: "the ugliest Christmas sweater"  
> Square #4 fill on my SPN fluff bingo card "matching sweaters"

It all began when Mary broke her leg on a hunt.

Well, maybe “all” was maybe too broad and all-encompassing a word for the situation at hand, considering the continuous soap opera that was their life. But still, Mary did break her leg. And just in time for a newly human Cas not being able to heal her, too.

She broke her leg, so Bobby brought her back to the bunker as fast as he could, and now she was once again living in the bunker with them. It was nice really to have Mom home. And now that the whole Michael and Empty businesses being solved, now that there was no threat over their head anymore, it really felt like home.

When Dean told Cas as much, Cas objected that being with Dean had always felt home, but now was the first time when the bunker had felt anything close to homely. Dean was in too good a mood to argue semantics, so he just shrugged and went back to his cooking.

So Mary was home, and with her broken leg she couldn’t really _do_ anything. Meaning: she was bored. Very bored. So bored in fact, that Dean could almost smell the frustration and boredom coming from her room.

But instead of binge-watching Stranger Things or the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, like he and Cas had started to do now that things were calmer on the supernatural front, Mary one day asked Dean to go buy for her some needles and yarn.

Except not just _some_ , because she had a very long and very precise list of exactly what she wanted. Dean’s reaction was a laugh of disbelief so loud and obnoxious, that Mary refused to talk to him for two whole days afterwards. It was Sam who ended up going to buy her knitting equipment, and Cas who passed on to Dean all of her culinary demands.

Once she got her gear sorted out, Mary spent whole days in her room, locked up with nothing but her yarn and needles and a few records playing.

And Dean really wondered what exactly she was going to do with them, because he saw the various balls of wool Sam had brought back, and they were all shades of the gaudiest colors in the world. What he really hoped, was that she was actually knitting several small unicolor things. Because mixing any of these colors would probably launch a new apocalypse. Or at least it would just create something very, very ugly.

When after two weeks of this, Mary proudly declared during dinner that she was almost finished with her first piece, Dean’s worst fears seemed to be coming true. Christmas was approaching fast, and his mother knitting so much but producing only one item meant only one thing: Christmas sweater. And by the looks of it, it was not going to be the kind you could post on instagram.

Not that Dean knew anything about Instagram, but Cas’s account full of random pics of cute things they found on the road was starting to get popular, and his followers did not deserve this.

Dean wished that Mary had taken so much time knitting just one piece because it was going to be a present for Sam and his giant body. If he was lucky, when he’d laughed at her new hobby, Dean had committed an offense serious enough that she’d decided he didn’t deserve his own sweater.

Dean thought he wouldn’t mind not deserving a sweater, but he also was well aware of the cliché of having your 2.5 children wearing matching sweaters for your family Christmas card photo.

And despite the idea of a tough hunter like Mary doing something so motherly as knitting still sounding so ridiculous inside of Dean’s head, there was some part of himself that felt actually glad that he had this slice of an ordinary life. Having your mother knit you an ugly sweater for Christmas felt just so normal, but still not normal enough that for Dean to warm up to what promised to be the ugliest sweaters ever.

 

When it was time for Christmas to come and gifts started piling up under the tree they had set up in the bunker library, Dean could clearly see that, amongst the gifts Mary had put down there, there were exactly two that were shaped like sweaters.

So Dean had to resign himself: he and Sam would be wearing awful sweaters for the rest of the winter season. Because of course he would wear his. His mother—his hunter mother who didn’t cook nor bake nor wear perfume—his _mother_ was making him a sweater. Of course he was gonna wear it. He wouldn’t _like_ it, but he would wear it.

Also the fact that Sam would be wearing one too was definitely softening the blow, because Sam’s would no doubt be way uglier than Dean’s (because everything always looked a bit better on Dean than on anyone else). Dean was sure to prepare to make funny photos of Sam in his sweater. If they were good enough, he’d even let Cas put them on his Instagram.

Except when Christmas morning finally came, and it was time to open the gifts, Mary actually did not give Sam a sweater. Instead, she’s gifted him with a pack of very fancy microbrew beers that Dean could still see himself making fun of Sam for. Not as much as if it had been a sweater, but truth be told, whatever Sam would have gotten, Dean would have found a way to make fun of him. That was just the awesome kind of brother Dean was. (Even if Sam’s present this year looked actually pretty good.)

So when Sam didn’t get a sweater, for one moment, Dean thought that he would be spared too. And maybe there weren’t actually any sweater under the tree, and Mary hadn’t knitted any sweater at all. Maybe she’d just been knitting a huge blanket for herself, and everyone would be completely free of this horrid association of colors she’d chosen to do.

The relief was short-lived though. As soon as Dean opened his present from Mary, he became the lucky owner of the ugliest sweater in the whole world. He had no idea what the pattern was supposed to represent of whether it was supposed to represent anything at all, but it sure was just as garish as Dean had guessed it would be.

He still smiled though because he was a polite son and he’d already mocked his mom’s knitting enough for a lifetime. So he smiled and he put the sweater on, and distantly wondered who the second sweater-looking gift had been for. He didn’t have to wonder long, because Cas—actual (former) Angel of the Trenchcoat—Cas, who almost never wore anything other than Jimmy’s old suit, also got a sweater from Mary.

Cas had gotten the exact same sweater as Dean. Well, not the exact same sweater, because for it to be the exact same it should have been knitted by someone a bit more skilled than Mary, but it was a sweater that looked a lot like the one Dean was wearing.

And Cas, who was even more polite than Dean was, put his sweater on too.

So here Cas and Dean were, with similar sweaters—similarly ugly sweaters, while Sam had none. It felt like such injustice that Dean couldn’t help but ask Mary why she hadn’t knitted one for Sam too. Wasn’t it the kind of situation where you were supposed to treat all your kids the same?

But when he asked her, Mary looked at him with such bewilderment that Dean felt like he’d committed the most serious social faux-pas. He glanced in Cas’s direction, wondering if in all his millennia of existence he’d ever been witness to something comparable.

“But, Sweetie…” Mary hesitated. “Matching sweaters are generally a couple’s thing, aren’t they?” she looked for a moment very alarmed that Sam, Dean and Cas had some kind of threesome thing going on, and Dean didn’t know where this fear could be coming from. There wasn’t even any kind of twosome going on in the first place.

“I just…really thought you and Cas would look very cute in matching sweaters,” she added, proving that she obviously disagreed with Dean’s conclusions on the matter.

Dean thought back on all the people in his life who had ever hinted at him and Cas being a couple. He recalled the many times that same idea had occurred to himself during the ten years he’d known Cas. Dean also pictured the way they were both so in synch living their everyday life in the bunker with the rest of their family.

He then looked over at Cas and at his goofy smile as he was admiring his great new sweater.

After that, the only thought left inside Dean’s mind was that yes, they _were_ a couple with matching sweaters. They’d been a couple without matching sweaters for a while now and Dean just hadn’t realized it.

Although it would be a shame to be a couple, yet to never kiss the person you were in a couple with, wouldn’t it? It seemed like an obvious conclusion, so Dean did just that.

He took the few steps that separated him from Cas, grabbed as much as he could of that awful sweater, and kissed him full on the mouth. Cas responded immediately to the kiss, as if it’d been a question he’d never been asked but had his answer ready all along.

Afterwards, he wasn’t sure that on Christmas morning, in front of the Christmas tree, with all your family—and also a lot of hunters you didn’t really know that well—had been the best conditions for his first kiss with Cas.

But given how sweet Cas’s kisses were, he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable on tumblr ♥](http://elsalapizza.tumblr.com/post/181121505325/fic-by-the-sweater-of-my-brow)


End file.
